South Korea's top portal service Naver has unleashed prototypes of its smart speakers with artificial intelligence voice assistant features and cute designs to venture into the fast-growing AI assistant industry dominated by global tech companies such as Google, Amazon and Apple.

Naver unveiled the new product through its Japan-based subsidiary, Line, in Tokyo. The new speakers, powered by Naver's AI voice assistant software "Clova", will play music, control smart home appliances and perform simple voice tasks such as managing a user schedule or responding to questions by providing web search results. It also engages in simple conversations.

The speakers will go on sale in Japan this autumn for about 15,000 yen (135 US dollars). Its software can communicate in Korean or Japanese but Naver did not say when it would add support for English and other languages.

Naver has aggressively invested in AI. The company operates an R&D center for AI-based autonomous driving and an AI lab specializing in machine learning applied to real-time translating service. LINE acquired Vincle, a Japan-based AI home appliance company in March.